What are Trailers?

We use the term "trailer" to refer to words that "trail over the
end of a number", meaning that the first few letters of that word
correspond to the last few numbers of a phone number. Then, the
numbers run out but the word keeps going.

5

5

5

8

7

2

4

|

|

|

|

T

R

A

I

L

E

R

In this example, the telephone number could be dialed as "555TRAILER"
(5558724537).
Your telephone company's equipment servicing your telephone line
will likely ignore the 537 ("LER"), the last three digits,
and pretend that you only dialed "555-8724".

When using DialABC's search tools, you can make trailers show up
by picking the "Show Trailers" or
"Show Everything" under the "Extras" option. They show up in the
word search results highlighted with green instead of the normal
orange.

An Example: 642-3245

The trailers for this number can be seen on the right hand side
in green boxes. Notice how these words go past the last digit
of the phone number.

6MNO

4GHI

2ABC

3DEF

2ABC

4GHI

5JKL

If you like The Simpsons, you might choose "Oh Cecil" as your
favourite mnemonic for this number. However, if your friend rides
(or sells) Harleys, you might use instead "Nice Bike". When you
call your friend, you would only need to dial "NICEBIK" or
"6423245, but in most cases you could dial the extra digit ("64232453")
and the telephone system will just ignore it.

Trailers give you the option to use a mnemonic that may be
slighly longer, but is much easier to remember.